Archive for ‘Renaissance/Premodern (Part II)’

Around 1961, two Skinnerian behaviorists named Keller and Marian Breland stumbled across a discovery that actually worked to weaken the prevalent radical behaviorist view of the time. The Brelands operated a business called Animal Behavior Enterprises, where they basically used operant conditioning principles to teach animals to do tricks for commercial purposes. As time passed though, the Brelands reluctantly began to notice that the animals they conditioned were gradually beginning to revert back to their original instinctual behavior. This “instinctual drift” as they termed it, called serious attention to the innate aspects of behavior that the radical behaviorists of the time so strongly opposed.

As I read this story in the text, I began to see a parallel emerge. Is it also in man’s nature to spiritually drift back to instinctive behavior? I guess I asked myself the age old question once again; is man inherently good or evil? I personally believe that as Creatures made in God’s image, we must be inherently good, and only until we are originally exposed to sin, do we fall into it ourselves. In regards to the Breland’s idea of instinctual drift, I like to think that we experience the same sort of thing and drift back to our original “blank slate” of innocence. Throughout our lives we are conditioned by our society, our government, our culture, our family, our friends, and numerous other institutions of control. But God calls us to be the salt of the world; in the world, but not of it, and it is this blogger’s belief that he supplies us with an innate spiritual drift that leads straight back to Him.

It seems today especially from Christians both from catholics and protestant back grounds, that skeptics are given a bad name. In fact it was said this week in chapel that it is much harder to find the truth in something than it is to find the fault and the point was to tear down skepticism, I take offense being a skeptic myself. The renaissance shows the true greatness of being a skeptic as well as how hard it is to be a skeptic and get criticized for it. Yes, that’s right i said its harder to be a skeptic, often you become attack and in many cases are unlike especially by those you disprove, yikes. One of my heroes in particular is Galileo as his ideas of what can be considered science have driven my logical arguments for years. His ideas on Primary qualities and Secondary qualities has shaped how i look at a rational argument and what i consider to be reason or logic. Basically the idea is that only things that can be perceived or measured mathematically or can not be perceived differently by different people can be considered a primary quality or scientific. But, there was one thing that we disagreed on. I believe that psychology can be considered a science. It is not an exact science but the psychological test that show the same result time and time again such as the Milgram experiment in which the participants were ask by what was general understood to be an authority figure to shock the another participant. It is questionable what each person precieves as an authority figure and whether they felt the other participant was in any real danger. Although it showed that people are easily manipulated time and time again by an authority figure. Is it science or not? You have to be a skeptic of either psychology or galileo’s ideas about psychology, have fun!

Reviewing the notes on Descartes, I am conflicted with his ideas on reason.  His belief that we should only accept as truth things that present themselves “so clearly and distinctly” to the mind, works great concerning knowledge and everyday life, but not with religion.  I recently heard a speech by Randy Harris in which he referenced the Tillich Paradigm, a model that uses reason to prove that it is in everyones best interest to believe in God.  Tillich starts with the premise that you can either believe in God or you cannot, then identifies that either God exists or he does not.  If you believe that God exists and he does not, then when you die you have not lost anything.  If you believe that God exists and he does, then when you die you hit the jackpot.  If you believe that God does not exist and he does not, then when you die nothing happens.  If you believe that God does not exist and he does, then you lose big time.  So, according to Tillich, logically it is the best decision to believe in God because you have the chance to win big and you can’t really lose. My problem with this theory is that if you follow this theory, then you are not following Christianity for the right reasons.  I do not believe that one should primarily use faith or reason concerning religion, but a duality of the two.

The Bible, the Koran, the Vedas and all the texts revered by the world’s various religions are sources of endless debate. Their origins are hotly contested and the influence of man on their contents can never be understood to the degree that we all wish it could. Thus, the relationships between people and these texts are extremely complicated and the discussions about them are nearly always contained within frayed edges. How fully can one embrace a religious text?

The handout we received in class about The Renaissance says this about Luther: “For him, a true Christian is not allowed to adopt a skeptical method and argue both sides of an issue.” To many this seems unbearable and anti-intellectual, and to part of me it does too, but I am also deeply drawn to such a position. I have deeply conflicted emotions about religion and that phrase is where it all comes from. As a person the setting that I thrive in is one of consistency and routine. I was also raised in a very Christian home and these two things are in constant struggle. In the context I was raised in religiosity and consistency are helplessly opposed to one another. There are countless examples of scriptures that we don’t follow. A recent example: I was talking with some friends and one of them mentioned that another one of our friend’s moms got botox. From there they talked about how ironic that was considering what a big deal she makes about her faith. This baffled me and I asked them why Christianity and botox were intrinsically incompatible and their response was that getting botox was the height of vanity. I was absolutely unable to make sense of it because nearly everything we do when we get ready in the morning comes from varying degrees of vanity. To me, the logical extent of their embargo on botox should include make-up and jewelry. I can’t condemn one without the other because I can’t live with how inconsistent that feels.

If I were to fully embrace Christianity I would have to condemn the actions of those who helped harbor slaves in the underground railroad because the Bible says that slaves should submit to their masters. I don’t want to sound like I think the Bible advocates slavery, I think Christianity wants a world without it but I also think it only wants it if the slave owners become benevolent and free the slaves of their own volition. Similarly, if I were to fully embrace Christianity I see no way around the subjugation of women. If I held those beliefs I would be unable to live with myself. People have ways of explaining away or reinterpreting those scriptures that sound so foolproof, but it presents another problem for me: if you can explain away those scriptures and admit that a religious text is untrustworhy is those areas then how in the world do you have it within you to trust that text in so many other areas? I cannot accept the Bible without those passages, but I can’t live with myself if I do and further still if I reject the Bible, which I have to if I want to avoid being a misogynist, I have an immense guilt complex. As a result my relationship with Christianity is a tentative side hug, not knowing where it will go.

It was brought up in class (and believed by several philosophers in the Age of Reason) that man is perceived as a machine.  This view can range from flat-out criticism, to that of a “complex” machine (as did Descartes), all the way to Julien de la Mettrie on the opposite extreme, that man at every level behaves in a mechanistic manner.  But just how true or how extensive is the idea?

Behaviorialists most certainly would agree to varying extremes. The fact (as has been demonstrated in repeated experiments and therapies) that people can be “programmed” by pairing stimuli and responses over time doesn’t seem to contest this idea, and in fact supports it fairly heavily. The overwhelming effectiveness of behavioralist therapies for a majority of psychological disorders is another harrowing indication of some truth to the notion. There was even a study conducted (Benjamin Libet) that claimed the neural signal to “act” was actually sent before participants announced their intent to act (as they were asked) challenging the very concept of free will.

Are we just machines programmed from birth, and further engineered by the environment dictating how we develop and how we will respond? Is choice an illusion, with reasoning applied only after our actions as some sort of meek justification that provides us with some sense of autonomy? I find it kind of funny that these thoughts that we may have considered absurd during such earlier times turn out to be real quandaries even today.

I suppose that is what the field of psychology is all about. Asking the questions to which the answers are hardest to provide. What I find the most curious of all that is how universally everyone seems to revolt at the idea, how quickly we are to retaliate against the mere mention that our choices might not be our own, that we might not be in control of something so fundamental as our very thoughts and actions. I guess the most harrowing question of all is how would we ever know?